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Physicalism, or Something Near Enough by Jaegwon Kim is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Physicalism, or Something Near Enough about?

Contemporary discussions in philosophy of mind have largely been shaped by physicalism, the doctrine that all phenomena are ultimately physical. Here, Jaegwon Kim presents the most comprehensive and systematic presentation yet of his influential ideas on the mind-body problem. He seeks to determine, after half a century of debate: What kind of (or "how much") physicalism can we lay claim to? He begins by laying out mental causation and consciousness as the two principal challenges to contemporary physicalism. How can minds exercise their causal powers in a physical world? Is a physicalist account of consciousness possible? The book's starting point is the "supervenience" argument (sometimes called the "exclusion" argument), which Kim reformulates in an extended defense. This argument shows that the contemporary physicalist faces a stark choice between reductionism (the idea that mental phenomena are physically reducible) and epiphenomenalism (the view that mental phenomena are causally impotent). Along the way, Kim presents a novel argument showing that Cartesian substance dualism offers no help with mental causation. Mind-body reduction, therefore, is required to save mental causa

Who reads Physicalism, or Something Near Enough?

Author

Jaegwon Kim

Publisher

PrincetonUP

Published

2007

Language

EN

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Philosophy, Humanities

Rating

3.91 / 5 (58 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14